Thursday, February 19, 2009
Recommissioned - Episode Five (Finale)
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Sunday, February 15, 2009
Recommissioned - Episode 4
These were two pictures that did not make the final cut of the story. To be more direct, these were both photos that I finished at 4am and forgot to upload them before Vesta put up the newest update. By the time I realized that they had not used them, the update was done and Vesta and her team were already on their way home.
The bios this week were two of my favorites, White Owl and Badd Kitty. I was allowed to develop Badd Kitty without any editorial reins, which was nice for me. White Owl's story was a bit more sculpted and it had to jibe though with the material we had already established in previous continuity, and it had to go along with "Project: Eternal Vigilance" with no continuity glitches. It took a while, but we finally got it to click. There is a very LARGE update coming up featuring Red Dawn, and I had a small (but essential) amount of help cataloging some of the original Red Dawn history that has been established by Kendra James herself and a few of her closer friends (including "her biggest fan") to help establish her backstory. Many thanks to Kace for helping me keep track of all of Red Dawn's convoluted history, and for doing it in record time. I gave him two weeks, and he did it in two days.
The bios (there are twenty-two of them now) are starting to wear me down a bit. Vesta has suggested that I take a small break, or that I assign someone else the task of writing bios for awhile. Rawley Duke has shown interest in writing, and she's very good at it, so I might let her give it a shot. The continuity for these bios is very important, so all of the material needs to be checked and rechecked against what has been published already, although the newer characters have more flexible histories that can be played with.
The Clips4Sale store has two new videos in it. One is "My Green Welcoming", which is a seventeen minute StarGirl video with plenty of kryptonite scenes in it. The model, Danielle Milcher, did a great job and I'm shooting her again in North Carolina in a few months, when we do "Stargirl vs StarGirl" in Durham. The other video is "Freeze-Frame", a thirty-one minute movie which is the first of two 'freeze' videos we shot earlier this year. The paralyzation/statue/freeze fetish is very hot right now (no pun intended), so we're trying a few videos in new directions. Sales have been strong so far.
My plans are also to once again re-open dialogue with "The Mayor" and possibly look at a crossover series between the League of Amazing Women and MetroCity Heroines if time and budget will allow it to happen. We (the collective 'we') have no script currently in place but Vesta and the Mayor both have ideas for production and we'll probably outsource it to someone independently. I'll strictly be an executive producer on this project (because of the travel involved) instead of a writer and half of the story will be filmed on each paysite, with myself acting as an intermediary between both production houses as the various metahuman characters in the story 'cross over' accidentally to the opposite respective universes and encounter different foes and supervillains than the usual suspects. I believe Kace called it "the Perilverse", and that's as good of a name as any to call any 'shared worlds'.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
"Recommissioned!" (Episode 3)
This week we're showing episode three of "Recommissioned!" This update is bigger than the one before it because I had a little more time to work on the update itself (over ninety pics this week, plus a small video, and three updates to the League's BIO page.)
I was very happy with the direction that Vivian Ireene Pierce and I had undertaken for this shoot. Although I had never worked with Anna (I believe she now goes by the modeling name of "Laura Lee") before, I knew her through her work at Sleepy Soles (and a friend of mine had sent me a short video clip of her telling me incessantly, "You need to see this video! She's SOOOO hot!") VIP and I coordinated beforehand to make sure we both understood my hastily-scrawled second-draft script. Anna, whom I do not believe had done superheroine work prior to this, was a quick study and easily acclimated herself to the larger-than-life dramedy of the L.A.W. storyline. Her first words to me were "My costume doesn't fit right. It's riding up my ass, and my nipples are poking through this thin little costume." to which I replied, "Then you're wearing it the right way."
I wanted to do somewhat of a retired superheroine (in VIP's character) who did not want to necessarily BE a superhero anymore. Maybe what we wanted was a reluctant superheroine, like a 'Shane' of the comic-book era. Wonder Vivian doesn't WANT to be reactivated into service. What she really wants to do is kick back in her lawn chair, open the screen door to her deck, and watch the Pacific waves come crashing in against the surf every morning. She's happy at Imperial Beach, occasionally defeating the occasional mugger or carjacker. She just wants to be left alone. Vivian played this character with a bit more sadness in her than I would have wanted, but she definitely got the 'bitchy' parts right on the money after she gets affected by Doctor Vanderpenis' "Hate-Ray".
Imperial Beach, BTW, is a real life location located on the very southernmost tip of California. It's where The United States, Mexico, and the Pacific Ocean all converge into a single point of land. If you've seen the HBO series "John from Cincinnati" then you know the place I am talking about.
The scenes with the net were a nightmare to shoot. I reset my shutter speed to take a decent pic of the net in flight, but because the shutter speed was now set to 1/200th of a second, the pictures were incredibly dim because the shutter was only open for a fraction of its usual time. I had to increase overall lighting in the hall in order to compensate. Fortunately, Vesta was kind enough to assign me an assistant while I was staying at the hotel, so we have this cute little redhead standing just off-camera perched on top of a small stepladder with the net in her hands. We throw the net a total of nine times, and of those nine, I have five throws which are usable by me. VIP, always a professional, was a good sport as she had the net tossed on her numerous times, messing her hair and yanking her tiara off-center as it whipped down on her head time and time again.
The reason you don't really see the piano throughout most of the story up until this point is that I carefully cropped most of the pictures in order to get it out of the shots. Those final two pics with Anna laying on the piano bench are the only ones that I really 'allowed' into the shoot, but in the next episode we'll see them like normal. Anna, BTW, was more than happy to rest her feet on that piano bench because the boots we outfitted her with were a little out-of-size and they were killing her arches (Anna has the tiniest, sexiest little feet you could ever see. Her shoe size is a 6 and VIP takes a 5 1/2 sized shoe as well, both of them are blessed with teeny little feet.)
All in all, a very big update. As I said earlier, over ninety pictures on my side of the website, plus story text/dialogue. With Vesta's website, you certainly get value for your dollar. This week you get two photo updates, a normal video update, a smaller video update (1:45), three superheroine bios for you to read, and the occasional art update as well from time to time. All for under eighteen dollars a month.
I was very happy with the direction that Vivian Ireene Pierce and I had undertaken for this shoot. Although I had never worked with Anna (I believe she now goes by the modeling name of "Laura Lee") before, I knew her through her work at Sleepy Soles (and a friend of mine had sent me a short video clip of her telling me incessantly, "You need to see this video! She's SOOOO hot!") VIP and I coordinated beforehand to make sure we both understood my hastily-scrawled second-draft script. Anna, whom I do not believe had done superheroine work prior to this, was a quick study and easily acclimated herself to the larger-than-life dramedy of the L.A.W. storyline. Her first words to me were "My costume doesn't fit right. It's riding up my ass, and my nipples are poking through this thin little costume." to which I replied, "Then you're wearing it the right way."
I wanted to do somewhat of a retired superheroine (in VIP's character) who did not want to necessarily BE a superhero anymore. Maybe what we wanted was a reluctant superheroine, like a 'Shane' of the comic-book era. Wonder Vivian doesn't WANT to be reactivated into service. What she really wants to do is kick back in her lawn chair, open the screen door to her deck, and watch the Pacific waves come crashing in against the surf every morning. She's happy at Imperial Beach, occasionally defeating the occasional mugger or carjacker. She just wants to be left alone. Vivian played this character with a bit more sadness in her than I would have wanted, but she definitely got the 'bitchy' parts right on the money after she gets affected by Doctor Vanderpenis' "Hate-Ray".
Imperial Beach, BTW, is a real life location located on the very southernmost tip of California. It's where The United States, Mexico, and the Pacific Ocean all converge into a single point of land. If you've seen the HBO series "John from Cincinnati" then you know the place I am talking about.
The scenes with the net were a nightmare to shoot. I reset my shutter speed to take a decent pic of the net in flight, but because the shutter speed was now set to 1/200th of a second, the pictures were incredibly dim because the shutter was only open for a fraction of its usual time. I had to increase overall lighting in the hall in order to compensate. Fortunately, Vesta was kind enough to assign me an assistant while I was staying at the hotel, so we have this cute little redhead standing just off-camera perched on top of a small stepladder with the net in her hands. We throw the net a total of nine times, and of those nine, I have five throws which are usable by me. VIP, always a professional, was a good sport as she had the net tossed on her numerous times, messing her hair and yanking her tiara off-center as it whipped down on her head time and time again.
The reason you don't really see the piano throughout most of the story up until this point is that I carefully cropped most of the pictures in order to get it out of the shots. Those final two pics with Anna laying on the piano bench are the only ones that I really 'allowed' into the shoot, but in the next episode we'll see them like normal. Anna, BTW, was more than happy to rest her feet on that piano bench because the boots we outfitted her with were a little out-of-size and they were killing her arches (Anna has the tiniest, sexiest little feet you could ever see. Her shoe size is a 6 and VIP takes a 5 1/2 sized shoe as well, both of them are blessed with teeny little feet.)
All in all, a very big update. As I said earlier, over ninety pictures on my side of the website, plus story text/dialogue. With Vesta's website, you certainly get value for your dollar. This week you get two photo updates, a normal video update, a smaller video update (1:45), three superheroine bios for you to read, and the occasional art update as well from time to time. All for under eighteen dollars a month.
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